Royal Oak Tribune

After top staff exodus, Texas AG seeks $43M for Google suit

- By Jake Bleiberg

DALLAS» The mass exodus of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top staff over accusation­s of bribery against their former boss has left the Republican seeking $43 million in public funds to replace some of them with outside lawyers to lead a high-profile antitrust lawsuit against Google.

Former Paxton aides told The Associated Press that before they reported him to the FBI in September and began resigning, the lawsuit against the search engine giant was set to be handled internally by what is one of the largest state attorney general’s offices in the U.S.

The outside lawyers’ contracts put a price tag on the fallout from Paxton’s deputies accusing him of crimes in the service of a wealthy donor who employs a woman with whom the attorney general allegedly had an extramarit­al affair. It remains to be seen how much taxpayers will ultimately shell out under the complex deals.

“At the time I left, there was no intention of hiring outside counsel,” Jeff Mateer, Paxton’s former top lieutenant who resigned in October, told the AP.

Mateer said former Deputy Attorney General Darren McCarty was leading the investigat­ion into Google and they intended to assemble a trial team from among the office’s thousands of employees.

“Darren was more than able to do it,” Mateer said.

Through public records requests, the AP obtained contracts Paxton signed last month with two bigname law firms and a letter informing lawmakers of them. The letter was sent a day before the contracts were signed.

“The legal services cannot be adequately performed by the attorneys and supporting personnel,” of the attorney general’s office, Paxton wrote.

The attorney general has denied any wrongdoing. In response to questions for this story, Kayleigh Date, spokeswoma­n for Paxton’s office, said “the contract speaks for itself.”

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